One more cake...

I just wanted to put up the cake I did for my 10 year old.

One of these days I'll take the Wilton classes or something else and learn how to really decorate cake and use the tips and make flowers and all that fun stuff.  For now, I'll just settle for figuring things out on my own and making things that have a definite "homemade" feel to them. :)

What I've been up to...

I've been playing with food...

Baking cakes, and making cookies.

Snickerdoodles III

Submitted By: Sue W
Servings: 24
"Soft sugar cookie with a cinnamon-sugar topping."

Ingredients:

1 1/2 cups white sugar
1/2 cup butter, softened
1 teaspoon vanilla extract
2 eggs
2 3/4 cups all-purpose flour 1 teaspoon cream of tartar
1/2 teaspoon baking soda
1/4 teaspoon salt
2 tablespoons white sugar
2 teaspoons ground cinnamon

Directions:

1. Preheat oven to 400 degrees F (205 degrees C).
2. Combine 1 1/2 cups white sugar, butter or margarine, vanilla and eggs. Mix well.
3. Stir in flour, cream of tartar, baking soda and salt. Blend well. Shape dough into 1 inch balls. Combine 2 tablespoons sugar and 2 teaspoons ground cinnamon. Roll dough in sugar/cinnamon mixture and place 2 inches apart on ungreased baking sheets. Bake 8 to 10 minutes or until set. Immediately remove from cookie sheets.

And I discovered that while my kids won't touch bbq chicken breasts whole-  when I cut the chicken up into smaller pieces and put them on a skewer... they fight over who has more pieces...

A kid funny

Yesterday the kids were all giving hubby his Fathers Day cards.  I slipped my card to him in as well.  He opened them all up, gave the child it was from a hug and thanked them for their cards.  He opened mine up, read it and told me thank you.  Then leaned over and gave me a quick kiss.  Our five year old looked at us funny and in a giggly voice said "Daddy!  that was on the lips!"

Guess the kids don't see us kiss often enough. lol!

Menu Planning

When the kids were little, and not in school.  I was a menu planner.  I would sit down and plan out two weeks of meals and make one shopping list and go and spend 3 hours at the grocery store and stock up for the next two weeks and only have to stop by to pick up milk, bread, and bananna's in between those big trips.

The kids are older, they are busier with school and playdates and other stuff and I haven't consistently menu planned in a long time.

I'm trying to get back into the habit though.  I don't know if I can get organized enough to shop only once every two weeks again, but I can at least get organized so I know what is for dinner each day and what cooking/baking I'm planning on doing each day of the week.

Here's this week's menu:

Monday: Lasagna (leftover from Sunday night), salad, corn, and garlic bread.
Tuesday: Bake cakes for birthday parties later in the week and freeze them.  Dinner- grilled chicken, rolls, corn on the cob, baked beans.
Wednesday: Decorate cake for Angela's party.  Dinner- mac and cheese and chicken nuggets for kids.  Sandwich for me. (have an early YW activity I'll be leaving the house at 5pm for)
Thursday: Fajita's, and cheese Quesadilla's
Friday: Decorate cake for Ashley's party. Make Bread with Cami.  Dinner:  Hamburgers and Hot Dogs.  Potato Salad.
Saturday: Ashley's party- Party Food and Pizza.

Frog Eyed Salad

My friend called me today needing my recipe for Frog Eyed Salad.

In the past I had the recipe on an old blog sidebar, but I lost that when I changed some settings around.

I'll share it here, and probably start sharing some other favorite recipe's from time to time.

Frog Eyed Salad

1 cup Sugar
1/2 tsp salt
2 Tbs flour
1- 3/4 cup pineapple juice
2 eggs
1 Tbs lemon juice
16 oz acini de pepe pasta
3-  11 oz cans mandarine oranges
2-  20 oz cans pineapple tidbits
1- 20 oz can crushed pineapple
1- 9 oz carton cool whip

Directions:
1 Mix sugar, salt & flour.
2 Add pineapple juice and beaten eggs.
3 Cook until thick and add lemon juice
4 Cook acini de pepe. Drain.
5 Combine with above sauce, mix and put in an airtight container overnight.
6 Add mandarin oranges, pineapple tidbits, crushed pineapple and cool whip.
7 Put back in refrigerator for a couple of hours.

A summer day in the life of...

wake up
remind the kids that they should eat some breakfast
watch the USA soccer team's game
remind my 9 year old that she needs to clean her room
remind my 11 year old that he needs to clean his room
referee between the kids about who's turn it is to be on the computer
toss a load of laundry in the washer
feed the kids lunch
clean up from lunch
rotate clothes in the washer to dryer and new load in washer
agree to take kids to the pool
go to the pool
send hubby and oldest child off camping for the night
pull out something from the freezer for dinner for the rest of us
feed the kids dinner
get talked into having a movie night
decide the girls can watch their Disney show special
decide I'm not watching their Disney show special
try and decide what to do that I should be doing
decide to get on the computer instead of folding laundry or doing dishes

and that was my life today...

No wonder no one reads this blog. lol! :)

Saturday's

Growing up I sang a song in primary that started out like this:

Saturday is a special day it's the day we get ready for Sunday... and it talked about how it was the day that we did all of our chores in preperation for the Sabbath the next day.

I find that my saturday is always full of chores... the kids have chores to do, my hubby spends a few hours working on yardwork, and I always seem to wait until saturday to do my major laundry with the loads going one after another all day long.

This has been a busy week.  I went to our church's girls camp for two days and left the kids home with my hubby... they had fun playing at friends houses while he went to work each day.  I of course came home with a bunch of dirty clothes even though I was only there for two days, one night! 

So I'm looking at the laundry room and getting ready to tackle it now... of course with it being summer the kids go through more clothes as well.  There's the pj's, then the clothes they change into in the morning, then the swimsuits and outfit they wear over the suit to the pool that get's thrown on the ground and towels used in the afternoons and then the third outfit that they wear after we get home and change out of wet suits. 

So... laundry here I come!  Hubby is trying to race around and get his yardwork done before the USA world cup soccer game is on today. 

Summer is here!

So the last month and a half flew by!  I got talked into being the homeroom mom for the last few months of the school year for my pre-k daughter's class.  The morning homeroom mom and I decided to put together a scrapbook for the teacher and assistant to give to them as end of the year gifts for teacher appreciation week.  I'm not a scrapbooker.  I often wonder how Robyn (My Pink Stamper) and I get along so well when I have no desire to scrapbook and do paper craft type stuff. lol!  But we perseveared and with the help of some critters Robyn made for us with her Cricut and some neat scrapbook pages we put together two really cute scrapbooks.  Then we had a busy time with teacher appreciation week.

Then my dear hubby and I were able to go off on a cruise by ourselves in May.  It was our first cruise and we are officially hooked on cruising!  Can't wait to go on another one! :)  The kids loved the babysitter that stayed with them and everyone was happy in the end.

Then we had the end of the school year rush with class parties and all that fun stuff... and now it's the blissful slower summer schedule.  Going and swimming at the pool for hours on end.  Playing in the backyard and having water fights with bottles of water.  Watching movies and playing video games.  We are right in the honeymoon phase of summer vacation and are enjoying it immensely.